So I'm on the 5th gym in Sword and I have some opinions. These are from someone who is'nt even a lapsed fan. I had Red when it came out as I was a kid. Got Yellow used from Blockbuster back in the day. Got Silver day of release and thought it was amazing, probably the first game I was ever hyped for. Played Gold as it was an Xmas gift and then rented Ruby from Gamefly and maybe got to the 3rd gym and that was it for Pokemon. I played Lets Go last year as it was a product made for someone like me. Enjoyed it enough, but only got half way before the nostalgia ran out.
So I'm coming to Sword as a "well I like JPGS, liked Pokemon as a kid, and I have a Switch" person. I always wanted a main game as a console game and while the Switch is not the console of my dreams I am enjoying the game.
I mean it's obviously not the game it should be. I can see that. I mean I don't care about the Pokedex stuff as well I never cared about catching them all or caring over my collection. But you know as far as graphics go the game looks ok....Like it doesn't look amazing, but when I troll and say it looks like a Nintendo game, I'm not lying. I don't think it looks that bad, yeah the Switch could do more and maybe the biggest series in the world should maybe have a bit more ambition to show, but it looks ok. The graphics have style and personality, when they want too...
It's like the animation. It's pretty shitty that my starter Pokemon just kind of shitly bounces up and down when doing a kick attack. It looks silly and low budget. But when my main Pokemon is doing a clearly signature attack, when the Big Pokemon are using attacks, when they transform, the character flourishes and so on are really well animated and look great. I almost feel the entire point of the Dynmax stuff is to have cool effects, as eh that mechanic feels a bit pointless to me otherwise.
The world also looks nice and feels to scale, when it seems they put effort into it. It does have "one screen jrpg town syndrome" which is a bit lame as on the GBC that world of Silver seemed huge. While I think there is good detail, great camera work to help with atmosphere, and decent scale. As you go on the towns feel kind of meh as does the world. Which you know has the positive of it feeling not tedious. Cool as an adult, I don't want this game to feel too long. But still I'd expect the the world to feel bigger and maybe a bit less linear. It still has that adventure feel I like.
I guess the Wild area is supposed to make up for it. Which is cool and I like it as theres plenty of cool Pokemon you can find. I mean it does look and feel like developer's first open world zone. Does'nt touch anything the Xeno games have done. I mean I have spent a lot of time in it, but thats also just to do the Max Raids which feel broken. I mean you can get so many Exp boosts/candies from these easy ass battles. Battles that I cant even seem to get the online part to work, but don't care as the dumb ai gets the job done. By that I mean, I dont care and can do them pretty much on my own. Combined that with exp share and well... I mean I'm liking how easy it is to level other Pokemon.
I don't know, I'm liking the game because of how breezy it is. Which is probably not what big fans of what. I've watched Youtbe essay reviews of the other games, like Black and White. That game looks like it has such a more interesting story and world then Sword which feels rather safe in comparison. Which is maybe the problem, but as a casual person here I'm just getting a fun Pokemon rpg.
